Gentle Art of Mentoring

IN GREEK mythology, Mentor was mentioned as a friend of the cunning hero Odysseus who left his island kingdom to join the Greek army in the Trojan War. Before leaving, he asked Mentor to keep an eye on his young son Telemachus.

If you follow what old Mentor did, you would realise mentoring is not coaching or supervision by an older authoritative figure over a novice or recruit. Rather, it is a gentle process of listening, and offering moral support, advice and suggestions to young people like Telemachus as they start out on their career path.

To have a Mentor is a rare privilege. He provides you with a moral compass and some nudges here and there, but he doesn’t order you to follow his direction or propose that you take a certain course of action. It is up to you to choose your options, make mistakes, acquire knowledge, and resolve issues in your career and relationship. The Mentor relies on having had similar experiences in his past, to provide the sound advice that you are free to accept or ignore.

Mentoring in the workplace

Many companies appoint official “Mentors” for new employees (known by the horrid word “mentees” which sounds like baby sea cows). Strictly speaking, such senior people are not Mentors but career guides and counsellors who also evaluate and write reports about the new employee’s attitude, behaviour and competence. As a result, the employee faces a double burden: in addition to sucking up to their own direct supervisor, they also need to curry favour with the official “Mentor” to ensure they get a favourable report.

Of course if you are skilled in office politicking, you can play your supervisor against the Mentor, but this is a dangerous game and you usually end up the ultimate loser.

The genuine Mentor in your workplace is in an unofficial, voluntary role. Both of you choose each other through an informal, invisible process (hence many people go through their entire career without ever being mentored).

The Mentor would thus be someone in your company who has much longer experience than you, who is wise in the working world, but not necessarily someone of higher seniority. He is not directly involved in your work; so he helps you evaluate your progress and performance without bias or obligation.

He prods you to believe in yourself and to develop your own self-confidence. He challenges you to explore new ideas and options, but he leaves you to find your own answers.

In a word, the Mentor is more than a friendly colleague, but he is not a teacher, supervisor or coach.

You as Mentor

If you want to be someone’s Mentor, you would need to check if you have the patience, sensitivity and understanding for this role. You refrain from lecturing or telling them what to do in their career advancement. But you challenge them to explore new ideas, to seek out difficult tasks and options, and to believe they can achieve far more than they think they can.

Look at in another way, mentoring is a form of giving back to society. Someone has once helped you along life’s journey, now you are paying back to the community by being a Mentor yourself. It can be frustrating and tiring at times because the pupil can be dull and unresponsive, and yet the Mentor is in no position to enforce his advice. Ultimately, however, it is rewarding when the Mentor sees the transformation he has wrought in another’s life.

Moral Compass

The Mentor is guided by his inner Moral Compass, a set of safety precepts on clear thinking, right speech and blameless conduct. Like the magnetic needle that always points north no matter how you rotate the casing, the Moral Compass always points to the moral north no matter what excuse you may give, to justify a certain deviant behaviour.

The Moral Compass covers five precepts or prohibitions – no lying, no stealing or taking of anything that doesn’t belong to you (including someone’s spouse!), no consumption of alcohol or intoxicating substance (to maintain mental clarity at all times), no killing or hurting any living creature, and no promiscuous sex. While you won’t get rich by sticking to these precepts, you will always sleep soundly each night, and your quiet hours will not be haunted by self-recrimination or pre-dawn visits by the police.

Su Shih 蘇軾 the brilliant scholar, poet and administrator (died August 24, 1101) in the Song Dynasty was once thrown into jail on a trump-up charge by enemies at court. The next day, however, the Emperor ordered his immediate release. The Emperor said he asked the warden to observe Su Shih in his sleep. The warden reported back  that Su slept and snored like thunder!

For a man who could snore in prison, it was obvious he had a blameless conscience, His Majesty noted wryly.